halfcactus

April media log, with some spillover into May—I read With This Ring on the Labor Day holiday—I was sandwiched by snoring adults, and lying on top of the seam where two beds were pushed together, and couldn't sleep. 😂

Books

The Bonesetter's Daughter by Amy Tan

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


A story of intergenerational trauma between a bonesetter/oracle bone collector, an inkmaker, and a ghost writer.

I was really engaged in Ruth's PoV, the conflicts and anxieties that arose from her traumatic upbringing, and the way she personified the themes of language and ghosts and writing. I'm so glad she found answers and got closure in the end, even though I wasn't very invested in the mystery of Bao Bomu's real name. I did really enjoy the novel's relationship with language and translation, and how Ruth's struggles with the language were very specifically a product of their time and place—matching radicals to the paper dictionary + her insinuation that only old or extremely specialized people could read traditional script. 😂

I couldn't stand Art or Art's kids and couldn't forgive them for how rude they and their families were during Mid-Autumn dinner. They were old enough to know better and school their children. May they never be invited to parties or community events ever again.

I actually think Lu Ling's chapters were the weak link because they weren't paced very well, and in spite of its intentions I think it failed to convey the emotional complexity in her relationship with her sister. The non-tragic relationships, in general, didn't feel earned.

Unrelatedly, I wish I'd paid more attention to the timelines of this book, because it feels like Ruth loses her voice around ghost month?

Content notes: this book contains suicide, drug addiction, embarrassing situations caused by poor sex education, childhood sexual assault




With This Ring by Carla Kelly

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Marriage of convenience + hurt/comfort romance novel: She is the unloved eldest daughter with severe self-esteem issues and a desire to do meaningful work, while he is a wounded soldier with war trauma and men he wants to take care of.

Nothing about the novel feels remotely plausible, but it's fine, other than the completely unnecessary child acquisition storyline—it just feels too heteronormative, especially since the characters' chemistry feels more platonic than romantic to me. I think I could have rolled with it better if it had more angst for flavor. :P




Shisi, “Little Mushroom” Book 1: Judgement Day
Book 1 = book 1 of the web version (the print versions collate the first 2 books into the same volume)—I'm mostly putting this down so I remember my impressions.

I really loved the first chapter: it draws you in atmospherically and emotionally, with the right amount of mystery to make you keep reading, as the information that's filtered through An Zhe's PoV comes to you piece by piece.

The backdrop for the story is beautifully, vividly rendered, but the worldbuilding feels pretty shaky as of now (I do presume that some of my questions will be addressed later on). There's no cultural information whatsoever, but I guess this is set far enough in the apocalyptic future for cross-cultural interactions to be natural to the characters. The vaguely Western names throw me off, and I'm not very sure about what the book wants to say about Doussey (sp?). I also feel that the romance tropes disrupt the tone and flow of the story, but sometimes they're a welcome interruption from the more gruesome bits.

The action-horror chapters are very well done and give me anxiety with distressingly descriptive (but not overdone) body horror, gore, and bug-related paranoia. 🙈 Anyway, the general vibe to me right now is science fiction shounen anime/videogame with BL endgame. XD

IMO, the English translation does really well with scenery and visual details! The dialogue is a bit stilted, though. But it is very readable, and has some choices I really liked. I just feel it could use more time for polish and a few rounds of editing to smooth out the phrasing and errors (there was one particular sentence that just didn't make sense).

Current/Recent Media

4 episodes into Trigun Stampede—I never watched the original so this is all new to me! So far it's fun and it nails what it tries to achieve, but it's not what I'm looking for right now haha.

Tears of Themis: My first gacha ever. 😭 This is a free mobile otome game/gacha game, with Ace Attorney-like elements (investigation, court trials). The gameplay is very hard to enjoy because my phone is low on memory, and it keeps crashing, but it has enough variety of things to do to make you want to keep playing. The investigation parts are particularly frustrating for me, though, because I keep failing to tap the right spots, and sometimes there are clues that are lying around that you can't interact with until a bit later. I'm mostly enjoying this as a translated piece of media! I nearly had a heart attack when Luo Jinghe (Marius) first showed up as a shadowy CEO that looked and sounded exactly like Fei Du. Turns out it's the same VA as the audiodrama actor. 😂 I found myself finishing 2 cases in 2 days and then quit cold turkey because I was tired of losing my entire night to it. I'm not really interested in the plot, cases, or any of the characters (I find my boss and the psychiatrist annoying tbh), but I enjoy Rosa as a protagonist, at least.